1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for rejection and recovery of cards such as cash cards, and more particularly to a card issuing apparatus and a card reading apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when rejecting a card which has caused an error during a card issuing or when recovering an invalid card such as a card whose term has expired, the card is directly fed to a reject or recovery box without processing the card. For example, this method is disclosed in Japanese Utility Model, Publication of Unexamined Application A-63-1836. Hereinafter, the term `recovery` is to be understood to include `rejection`.
Moreover, Japanese Utility Model Publication 5-36568 discloses a reject/recovery method using a recovery box divided into a plurality of sections (rooms) for containing a card rejected due to an error, a card to be recovered, and a card which has been forgotten. In this case also, cards are fed to the recovery box without being processed.
These two examples disclosed in the aforementioned publications are associated with a recovery method and a recovery mechanism for pre-paid cards such telephone cards and orange cards (for train tickets) which are thinner and softer than cash cards issued by banks. The aforementioned two methods have also been used for recovering cards having a greater thickness and an emboss coding such bank cards and credit cards.
The aforementioned conventional methods, however, has a problem that cards which have been fed to a recovery box have external views not different from normal cards and magnetic stripes operating normally. This leaves a possibility that a recovered card is taken out of the recovery box and its magnetic data is rewritten for an unauthorized use of the card.
Moreover, the conventional method using a single recovery box has an advantage that a space required is small but has a problem that it is impossible to identify the conditions of recovery for respective cards. That is, when a single recovery box is used, a card which has been rejected by an error and a card whose term has expired are fed to be contained in one and the same recovery box. In addition, the recovered cards are not subjected to any processing for identifying recovery conditions.
Furthermore, the conventional method using a recovery box divided into a plurality of sections has an advantage that cards can grouped according to recovery conditions but this method has a problem that the plurality of sections require a plenty of space, which in turn increases an entire apparatus size required.